Friday, October 26, 2012

Political Money Train

The
Political Money Train is unbelievable. Money just keeps pouring in to capture
the Presidency and other U.S. and local offices. Do you ever wonder how many
people expect to be paid back in one way or another – somehow?by Charlie
Leck

The newspaper I'm reading this morning says that more than 2 Billion -- 2 BILLION -- dollars have been spent on this years presidential campaign. Oh, my!

Let’s get local!For
just a bit here, let’s focus on how some local money is being spent on a small
Minnesota State Senate seat over in the community of Edina (ee-dine-a). Granted, this is one of the
wealthiest suburban communities in America, but, geez-louise, this is an awful
lot of money they are spending over there to win one measly, little State Senate
seat.

It’s
called Senate District 49. The Republicans are running State Representative
Keith Downey for the Senate seat. Melisa Franzen is the Democratic candidate.

Downey
has raised approximately $140,000 for the race. That doesn’t sound like a lot compared
to the national races, but, believe me, it is. That’s the highest total
campaign chest in the state.

Franzen
has raised, easily, over 100 thousand. Exact figures will be available sometime
early next week. This past Tuesday, Senator Al Franklin was the headliner at a big fund
raiser for Franzen.

Now,
in a quite liberal state, Edina has always been a bastion of conservative
thinking – economically and politically. The chink in this is that it not
conservative socially. Edina is a generous community and its people think
liberally when it comes to correcting social problems and pushing education and
job training. Franzen is trying to take advantage of that thinking. She’s a
corporate attorney (Target Corp) and she’s known to be conservative financially; yet, she
wants Minnesota to be in the fore-front of correcting societal problems.

Big
Democratic dollars have poured into state races this year. Alliance for a Better Minnesota
(ABM) and its fund raising partner, Win
Minnesota, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and is spreading it
around to local candidates. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve given a
significant amount of money (for me) to Win
Minnesota. The idea is to capture at least one of the two houses of state
government this year, if not both!

ABM
is placing a number of TV spots that go after Downey. A PAC, Freedom Club, has
also run TV ads supporting Downey. TV is expensive and it is unusual to see
such ads for local candidates. But, in comes the big money and these little
campaigns expand enormously.

The
former State Senator from Edina, who gave up his seat, is Geoff Michel. He
makes it clear that Democrats don’t have a tinker’s chance to elect a State
Senator in Edina. Let’s see if he’s correct.

How much money has been
spread around the state?ABM’s
goals are extraordinary, but they’ve raised a lot of money. It will take awhile
to see just where that money went. We’ll be able to make pretty accurate
guesses after the campaign financing reports come out early next week.

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About Me

I write these blogs to leave behind a full picture of me for my grandchildren. I had no such snapshot of my own grandparents and what they believed and how they thought. Ad Astra, you probably know, is Latin for To the Stars. Without being literal about it, it's my final destination (where I "shall forever sit, triumphing over death, and chance, and Thee, O Time").